OPINION: The “Never Trump” camp has been sounding the alarm for years—and the silence in response is deafening

The Concentration of Power as a Core Strategy

The Never Trump Republicans aren’t talking about policy. They aren’t outraged by tax cuts or immigration restrictions. They’ve been having those same debates as any other conservative for decades. What they’re talking about is something fundamentally different. They’re talking about the systematic concentration of power in the hands of a single man—and the effects that concentration has on the institutions meant to check that power. Liz Cheney, in her 2024 book titled Oath and Honor, describes with clinical precision how Republican elected officials capitulated one after another—not because they truly believed the lies about a stolen election, but out of fear. Fear of a primary. Fear of insults on social media. Fear of the mob.

This institutional mechanism of fear is, according to the Never Trumps, one of the most dangerous innovations of Trumpist politics. When a politician can enforce loyalty not through ideological persuasion but through the terror of reprisals, the entire system of checks and balances seizes up. Senators and representatives who are supposed to oversee the executive branch become courtiers. The courts, prosecutors, and independent agencies find themselves under constant pressure. And the public, little by little, comes to accept as normal what it would once have considered unacceptable.

Foreign Policy as a Blind Spot

Another focus of the “Never Trump” warnings concerns U.S. foreign policy and its implications for the world order. John Bolton, H.R. McMaster, and James Mattis—three former members of the Trump administration who resigned or were fired—have all, to varying degrees, expressed concerns about Trump’s approach to international alliances. NATO, treated as a protection racket whose members don’t pay enough. Ukraine, viewed as a burden rather than a partner in defending European democracy. Relations with authoritarian regimes, cultivated with ostentatious warmth that contrasts with the coldness displayed toward traditional allies.

What strikes me about this aspect of the criticism is that these men are not pacifist idealists. Bolton wanted to bomb Iran. Mattis commanded troops in Afghanistan. McMaster is a career military officer. When people like that say a foreign policy is irresponsible, it’s not just progressive rhetoric. It’s a technical assessment of real risks. And their verdict is grim.

Surrender as a Survival Strategy

If the warnings from the Never Trumpers are so well-documented, so articulate, so verifiable—why does the Republican Party as a whole remain silent? The answer to this question is perhaps the most troubling part of this whole story. It’s not that Republican elected officials don’t believe their dissenting colleagues. It’s that they have calculated—rationally, cynically—that it is more costly to speak out than to remain silent. And in this calculation, they aren’t necessarily wrong in the short term. Jeff Flake, a former Republican senator from Arizona who dared to criticize Trump, chose not to run for reelection in 2018 rather than face an unwinnable primary. Bob Corker, another critical Republican senator, followed the same path. Lisa Murkowski, a senator from Alaska, is one of the few to have survived politically after taking dissenting positions—and even then, only after a fierce battle.

This phenomenon of institutional capitulation is precisely what the Never Trumps had predicted. When a political party ceases to be a coalition of ideas and becomes a machine of personal loyalty, it loses its ability to function as a counterweight to power. And it is the citizens who pay the price for this abdication—because the institutions meant to protect them suddenly find themselves protecting the man who leads them.

Conservative Media as an Amplification Chamber

The other factor explaining why the Never Trump warnings struggle to gain traction is the media landscape of conservative America. Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, thousands of podcasts and YouTube channels—an entire information ecosystem that functions less as a news service than as a validation service. In this world, the Never Trumps are not portrayed as conservatives sounding the alarm—they are portrayed as traitors in the service of the left. Their arguments are not refuted; they are ridiculed, distorted, or simply ignored. And the millions of Americans who get their news exclusively through these channels never hear the warnings in their original, articulate, and well-documented form.

I often think about this information asymmetry when I look at polls showing that millions of Americans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. This isn’t stupidity. It’s the result of prolonged exposure to a single, coherent narrative repeated thousands of times. And the voices saying the opposite—including Republican voices—can’t break through that wall. It’s not a problem with the arguments. It’s a problem with the channels.

Cassandra is not an abstract metaphor

The history of democracy is dotted with figures who sounded the alarm—and who were ignored. We are familiar with the great tragedies of the twentieth century, the voices that foresaw what the majority refused to see. But there are more recent, closer-to-home examples that deserve to be mentioned here. In Hungary, members of Viktor Orbán’s party warned very early on about their leader’s drift toward authoritarianism—even before he had truly consolidated hegemonic power. They were marginalized, then forgotten. Today, Hungary is regularly cited as an example of an authoritarian resurgence within the European Union itself. In Turkey, secular Kemalists within the political system saw Erdoğan coming long before his transformation of the regime became irreversible. Their warnings were drowned out by the clamor of economic growth and popular nationalism.

This pattern—internal whistleblowers, marginalized, who are right too early to be heard—is one of the most consistent features of the drift toward authoritarianism. And it raises a daunting question: Are the Never Trumps going through the same experience? Are they right, but too early? Or too late?

The Window of Reversibility

Political scientists who study authoritarian transitions speak of a “window of reversibility”—the moment when a democracy can still correct its course before institutional changes become permanent. This window closes when checks and balances are sufficiently weakened, when independent media are marginalized, when the judiciary loses its independence, and when elections themselves are too compromised to produce a change in government. The Never Trumps argue—and this is their most urgent warning—that the United States may be passing through this window right now. Not in ten years. Right now.

This is the aspect that strikes me most in the Never Trumps’ recent writings. They no longer speak of the future with the detachment of a precautionary warning. They speak of the present with the urgency of a diagnosis. And this nuance—this shift in temporal register, from “here’s what could happen” to “here’s what is happening”—should send a chill down the spine of anyone who still harbors illusions about the natural resilience of democracies.

America That Listens but Doesn’t Change

The polls speak volumes in their ambivalence. According to various studies published in 2024 and 2025, a majority of Americans express concerns about the state of American democracy. A majority also expresses concerns about the concentration of power. And yet, that same majority—or at least a significant portion of it—voted for Trump’s return to the White House in November 2024. How can this apparent contradiction be explained? The answer is likely multifaceted: the prioritization of the economy over institutions, democratic fatigue after years of intensely polarized politics, the belief that the warnings are exaggerated, or simply the difficulty in concretely visualizing what an “authoritarian drift” means in one’s daily life before its effects are fully felt.

This is a phenomenon psychologists know well: human beings are very ill-equipped to respond to abstract, diffuse, and gradual threats. We react to sudden crises. We normalize slow shifts. And it is precisely this psychological framework that authoritarian populists exploit—by advancing gradually, testing boundaries, and gradually occupying the space left to them without ever provoking the shock that would spark resistance.

What the Rest of the World Sees That Americans Do Not

There is a painful irony in the fact that the warnings from the “Never Trump” camp are sometimes better received abroad than in the United States. In Europe, in the chancelleries of Berlin, Paris, and Brussels, the analyses of Liz Cheney, David Frum, and Bill Kristol are read with particular attention—because Europe has a more immediate memory of the consequences of authoritarian populism, and because Washington’s decisions directly affect its security and economy. NATO trembles at Trump’s statements on collective defense. European markets flinch at every announcement of tariffs. And diplomats on the Old Continent instinctively understand what the “Never Trump” camp describes—because they have lived through it, in their own history, under different names.

I remember a conversation I had with a European historian specializing in the 1930s. He told me something that has stayed with me ever since: “The problem with democracies is that they never believe they can die. They think their constitution protects them. But a constitution only protects if the men who administer it respect it.” ” The Never Trumps say exactly that. And the resonance this statement has in Europe speaks to the different experiences the two continents have had with the fragility of democracy.

Ostracism, threats, and career destruction

It is impossible to discuss the Never Trumps without addressing the price they have paid—and continue to pay—for their dissent. Liz Cheney lost her seat as a representative from Wyoming by a landslide in the 2022 Republican primary—a defeat orchestrated in large part by Trump himself, who had made her political destruction a personal priority. She received death threats. Her personal safety required round-the-clock protection. Adam Kinzinger chose not to run for reelection after he, too, received threats and became the target of intense harassment from Trump supporters. Mitt Romney, a former Republican presidential candidate, announced his retirement from the Senate in 2023, making it clear that a new generation of responsible leaders needed to take over—a polite way of saying he was tired of being the exception in a party that no longer needed him.

This systematic destruction of dissenters serves a specific purpose: it sends a message to all other elected officials. It says, in perfectly clear language: this is what happens to those who oppose us. And that message is coming through loud and clear. Most Republicans who have private reservations about Trump have fully grasped the cost of expressing them publicly. The result: internal dissent has dwindled to the point of being statistically marginal.

Resilience as a Political Act in Itself

And yet—they keep going. This is what, paradoxically, makes the Never Trumps as fascinating as they are unsettling to follow. They know they’ve lost their place in their own party. They know their influence on immediate political decisions is close to zero. And they keep going anyway. Liz Cheney writes books. Gives lectures. Testifies. George Conway contributes legal analyses on the Trump administration’s constitutional violations. The Bulwark, the media outlet founded by former dissident conservatives, continues to publish rigorous analyses. Why? Because they believe—or want to believe—that history has a memory—and that the warnings they issue today might fuel tomorrow’s resistance, even if no one is listening to them now.

There is something deeply moving about this stubborn persistence. It’s not Hollywood-style heroism. It’s more humble and more painful than that. It’s continuing to speak into an empty room, hoping that someone, somewhere, is recording the words for later. It’s writing for history when the present refuses to listen. And I don’t know if it’s courageous or desperate. Perhaps both.

The Structure of Denial in the Face of Evidence

One of the central frustrations of the Never Trumpers—which they regularly express—is the Trumpist electorate’s resistance to factual arguments. And this resistance is no mystery; it has been extensively studied by psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists. Research on cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias consistently shows that individuals tend to reject information that contradicts their preexisting beliefs—especially when those beliefs are tied to their identity. For millions of Americans, supporting Trump is not just one political stance among many. It is an identity. A sense of belonging. A way of expressing who they are and which side they’re on. And in this context, the factual arguments of the Never Trumps don’t work—not because they’re false, but because they threaten something deeper than political opinions.

This is a lesson that progressive and moderate American political communication has been slow to learn. And it may be one of the reasons why the warnings from the “Never Trump” camp—as rigorous and well-founded as they may be—struggle to shift the electoral landscape. They appeal to reason in a debate that is played out on the terrain of identity and emotion.

The Paradox of Credibility

There is a cruel paradox in the Never Trumpers’ situation: what gives their warnings their strength—their conservative background, their intimate knowledge of the subject, their ideological credibility—is precisely what makes them suspect in the eyes of Trump supporters. In the eyes of Trump’s base, a conservative who criticizes Trump can only be a traitor or an agent of the establishment. The credibility that should make them more persuasive becomes proof of their betrayal. And in this world where loyalty to the person has replaced loyalty to principles, there is no argument that can break through this wall without being reinterpreted as an attack.

I often return to this paradox when I try to understand how societies slide toward authoritarianism. It’s not that the people who see the danger are stupid or ill-intentioned. It’s that the very structure of political discourse has been distorted in such a way that the obvious can no longer be heard as the obvious. It is heard as an attack. And an attack must be defended against—not listened to.

The Value of Archives in a Time of Democratic Crisis

Perhaps one of the most enduring contributions of the Never Trumpers is the one least visible in the immediate debate: documentation. The books by Liz Cheney, John Bolton, Stephanie Grisham—former White House press secretary under Trump—and John Kelly, former chief of staff—constitute an extraordinarily detailed archive of the inner workings of an administration. These accounts, which often agree on the essential points despite their peripheral differences, paint a comprehensive picture that future historians will have at their disposal to understand this moment.

This documentary dimension is crucial for a reason that the Never Trumps sometimes express explicitly: even if their warnings don’t change anything today, they constitute a record that will make it impossible to completely rewrite history. They serve as a counterweight to the myths being constructed in real time. They are proof that there were people within the system who knew what was happening and who spoke out about it.

The Media as the Last Line of Defense—and Their Limitations

The role of independent media in conveying the “Never Trump” warnings to the general public is both crucial and insufficient. Outlets such as The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New York Times—as well as specialized media like The Bulwark and The Dispatch (founded by dissident conservatives)—have devoted considerable resources to covering and analyzing these warnings. But their audience, however large it may be, is largely made up of people who are already convinced. The structural problem with American media polarization is that each side consumes its own sources—and that the Never Trump warnings circulate primarily within bubbles where they don’t need to convince anyone.

This is perhaps the most daunting challenge of our media age: information exists, it is abundant, it is well-documented—and yet it does not reach the places where it could make a difference. We live in a world where the truth circulates freely but no longer crosses the boundaries of communities that have already rejected it. And that is a problem that neither journalism nor opinion writing has yet figured out how to solve.

Signs of an Acceleration

Since Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025, the warnings from the Never Trump camp have taken on a new tone. They no longer speak of what might happen. They are documenting what is happening. The first weeks of his second term have been marked by a series of decisions that have confirmed the fears expressed for years: purges within the federal government targeting officials deemed insufficiently loyal, attempts to control regulatory agencies that are supposed to operate independently, tensions with the judiciary on several issues, and rhetoric about “enemies within” that goes far beyond anything a U.S. president has ever publicly expressed in recent history.

Liz Cheney and other Never Trumps have responded to these developments with a heightened sense of urgency—no longer to warn of a future danger, but to name what is unfolding in real time. And their assessment—that of observers who have spent years studying and documenting Trumpist methods—is that the second term is deliberately following a more ambitious plan than the first, drawing on lessons learned from the first four years to go further, faster.

The Role of Institutions in the Face of Pressure

The big unknown at the moment concerns the resilience of American institutions. Congress, largely won over to Trumpism, no longer constitutes an effective counterweight. The Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, has demonstrated an ability to protect certain constitutional norms—particularly regarding the limits of executive power—but also a tendency toward partisan decisions that compromise its credibility as a neutral arbiter. States governed by Democrats, such as California and New York, are resisting on several fronts—but their ability to serve as a systemic counterweight is limited within the framework of a federal system under pressure. Paradoxically, it is the Never Trumps who keep alive the reminder that these institutions were built for a certain type of political actor—and that their resilience has never been tested against an actor who decides to deliberately ignore them.

There is something almost surreal about experiencing a historic moment in real time while knowing that you are living through it. Usually, we only realize the significance of a period in hindsight. But the Never Trumps tell us, with a conviction I find impossible to dismiss out of hand, that we are living through one of those moments. That the decisions made now—whether acts of resistance or capitulation—will have consequences that far exceed immediate political agendas. And I believe they are right.

Why This Story Concerns You Directly

If you’re reading this article from Quebec, France, Belgium, or Switzerland—if you’re following U.S. news with the perspective of an outside observer—you might be tempted to think that all of this is simply an American affair, an internal crisis within a nation that has always had its excesses. That temptation is understandable. It’s also dangerous. The United States remains the world’s leading power—economically, militarily, and culturally. What is happening in Washington directly affects Europe’s security, global trade, climate change agreements, and the stability of the international financial system. The warnings from the “Never Trump” camp about an America in institutional decline are not without consequences for the societies that orbit around it—including our own.

And there is a second, more subtle but equally real layer of relevance: what the United States is experiencing is not an isolated case. Similar dynamics—the rise of populism that exploits legitimate anger, the weakening of institutions, extreme media polarization, and the gradual normalization of what was once unacceptable—are visible in many Western democracies. The American lesson, if heeded, can help identify and resist these dynamics elsewhere, before they reach the point of no return.

Listening isn’t enough—but it’s the first step

Ultimately, the Never Trumps are asking for one thing. Not to choose a partisan side. Not to subscribe to their entire ideological agenda—which remains conservative in many respects. They are asking for something much more fundamental: to listen. To take seriously the warnings of people who have spent their lives within the system and who say that this system is in danger. To resist the instinct to normalize, which pushes us to downplay what disturbs us. And, based on that listening, to ask ourselves what every citizen—American or not—can do to ensure that democracies remain democracies. This is not a call for revolution. It is a call for attention. For vigilance. For civic responsibility.

I’m not asking you to adopt the political positions of the Never Trumps. I am asking you to do something that is both simpler and more difficult: to take their warnings seriously. To read them in their original form, not in the caricatures their opponents paint of them. To ask yourselves whether, ten years from now, you will want to have been among those who listened and acted—or among those who listened and normalized.

The Question History Will Ask of Our Generation

There is a moment in the history of every fragile democracy when the warnings are still audible—when it is still possible to change course, to strengthen institutions, to resist the normalization of the unacceptable. That moment does not last indefinitely. The window is closing. And once it’s closed, all that remains is resilience—a slower, more painful process, one that costs more lives and more years—to rebuild what has been undone.

The Never Trump Republicans say that the United States is still within that window. That the institutions are still holding firm, imperfectly, but enough to keep the question open. And they say, with a sense of urgency that should grip us all, that this window will not remain open indefinitely. The question that history will pose to our generation—American or not—is whether we heeded the warnings when there was still time to act on them.

The Choice That Remains

I conclude this article without facile optimism, but also without despair. Because the very fact that these voices exist—that Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Miles Taylor, and dozens of others continue to speak out, write, and bear witness despite the personal cost—is in itself a sign that resistance is possible. That surrender is not inevitable. That choosing truth over opportunism remains an act within the reach of human beings, even in the most difficult moments. Democracy is not an automatic legacy. It is a daily practice. And the Never Trumps—whether or not we agree with them on every point—remind us of this with an intensity we would be wrong to ignore.

Is anyone listening? I hope so. Not because the Never Trumps are right about everything. But because the silence that greets them is the most disturbing thing I’m seeing right now in global politics. And if you take away only one thing from this text, let it be this: an alarm that we no longer hear has not stopped ringing. It is we who have stopped listening to it.

Signed, Jacques Pj Provost